I have a confession and, to be frank, I’m a little ashamed to admit it. But If I’m going to be fair to the realization I had about the value of personal posts and how helpful it can be to see other writers struggle and be real, I think I have to share it. To start with, though, let me explain what I’m not having trouble with.
The thing most writers struggle with at the beginning of their careers, where they can’t seem to finishing what they start? That is not a problem from me. I am a boss at finishing first drafts. I’ve got stacks of them. If I start a project in earnest, I get all the way to the end of the story. Period.
I know a lot of writers that finish a first draft and then can just never seem to make themselves touch that book ever again and I don’t have a problem with that either. I’ve gone through multiple drafts and revisions of every one of my works in progress and I’m not afraid to hack them up or totally rewrite as needed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I love editing but I do like the process of making a messy first draft into something better with a little work.
I am also not a perfectionist, the sort who dithers over every word until everything is just so, never calling anything finished so they never have to send it out into the world. I know when enough is enough and when something is as good as it’s gonna get. Clearly, I’ve called multiple projects Finished and sent them on to next steps or I wouldn’t already be a published author multiple times over.
BUT, I suspect that something is broken about my process, specifically the way I revise, because, to me anyway, it just takes too damn long! I go through too many drafts, spend too much time rewriting. For the number of hours I spend with my proverbial butt in the chair, doing the work on each project, showing the hell UP, I feel like I should have more things finished by now and it makes me feel like a fraud. It’s not because I’m not doing the work so I must be doing the work wrong, I think.
This never used to bother me before. I used to just work on editing a little bit each day because I figured I was learning and would naturally be slow at revision at first but would get faster with time. But I don’t seem to be getting any faster, if anything, I feel like it takes me longer to revise something (though the numbers don’t really back that up) and it’s spiraled into this ball of frustration, impatience and second guessing that’s not particularly helpful. It has me questioning everything and I don’t have time for that indulgence.
I thought I could combat this this year but giving myself hard deadlines and forcing myself to finish certain projects on that schedule as if I were really under contract for them. But doesn’t this seem to be working so far and, if anything, it’s backfired and made me doubt myself even more. I also realized that I was in no particular hurry to finish either of the projects I finished the fastest in the last few years, their stories just clicked in a way that helped me finish them naturally without intentionally rushing. But if the answer is to just let myself take as long as I need to on each project, how will I ever reach the output level you need to make a decent living in this wacky industry? Will that really just come magically with time or is it something I need to force? Am I wrong to force my writing into a timeline that feels unnatural or wrong not to train myself to revise faster? Or is all of this just impatience and I need to remember that I’m still learning the craft?
I just don’t know.
Of course, there’s the underlying  question in all of this: DOES it actually take me too long to revise? I don’t really know. I’m still publishing at least a book and a play a year and that’s something at least. I just know that I look at authors with publishing contracts who churn out multiple books a year and I know I’m not revising at that rate. Is that because they have editors to hand their books to that help them reach the end without all the extra drafts and rewriting I need to go through? I genuinely don’t know. I don’t think it’s because of the job and parenting on top of being a writer because other people have those too. Would it all be different if I were only writing novels, not always cycling between a play, novel, non-fiction book and more? For that matter, does the fact that I’m worried about this mean I’m doing it right… or wrong? These are just more questions I don’t have the answer to and I don’t know if the answers even matter.
As you can see, I’m spiraling around the bowl on this question. And, while I’m still working towards those deadlines, it’s making me wish I had someone who could tell me if I’m doing it right even as I understand that there’s no wrong way. In the meantime, I’m just putting my butt in the chair everyday, putting in the hours, hoping I’m on the edge of a writing breakthrough any minute now.
How do you feel about the speed of your revision process? Do you have strategies for rushing revision?
Photo by Enokson 
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
